Coherent laser detection and ranging (LADAR) applications use laser sources as optical transmitters to meet many requirements, including high pulse energy/peak power, good spatial beam quality and long pulse coherence time. These transmitters are often implemented with fiber lasers due to their compact/rugged architecture, support for flexible pulse waveform generation and high electric-to-optic efficiency. However, the long and small guiding core of a fiber laser results in issues such as the optical Kerr effect at relatively low peak powers. This parasitic, nonlinear effect manifests itself as self-phase modulation, i.e., an intra-pulse, time-dependent shift in the optical phase, which reduces the pulse coherence time, thereby hampering coherent LADAR.